Favorite Television Episodes...
Jan. 30th, 2024 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat"Even in shows that are good across the board, we may have favorites for personal reasons. Or maybe a show wasn't that great but there were a few episodes that have really stuck with you.
Can you pick a favorite episode from 5 different shows? Tell us why they're so memorable!"
Not as easy as it looks. I drew a blank and had to struggle to come up with Five. Also, I'd say a few are more memorable than necessarily favorites. They just stick with me, even when I draw a blank.
1. Fool for Love - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (memorable because it's kind of a twist on the flashback and unreliable narrator, where Buffy (a vampire slayer) is asking for information from a vampire (who has tried to kill her on numerous occasions and is known for killing at least three different slayers) on how to avoid being killed by one. But why would he give her the information? And more importantly why should she trust him? What's interesting in the episode - is the vampire, Spike, alternative motive - is not to hurt Buffy, but to get close to her, or gain her trust. And, not because he wants to kill her - quite the opposite. There's a parallel structure here - in that her boyfriend goes off with her incompetent friends to try and kill the vampire that had injured her.
The whole reason she went to Spike for intel is because she was wounded by a vampire.
The twist? Spike tells Buffy that it's nothing that he did or anything special about the vamps that resulted in the slayer's deaths. But the slayer themselves. The only reason he beat them - was they wanted him to. Otherwise, he'd have lost.
Nothing goes as expected in this episode, which makes it fun to watch. And each time I see it, I see something new.
2. Angel the Series - Episode - Dear Boy, in this episode, we get Angel's back story, but mainly through Darla's point of view. He becomes a vampire, and seeks vengeance on his father - by killing everyone in the household including his father. But it is revealed all Angel wanted was his father's approval - which he could never achieve, and Darla reveals that now he never will - because he killed him, and will always be empty and cursed as a result. It's not the soul that is his curse, but that unresolved matter with his father.
3. Breaking Bad - S4 - Problem Dog - Problem Dog - there's a memorable scene in the middle of the episode, that is the only thing I clearly and vividly remember from this series. In it Jesse, partners in crime with Walter White (the show's anti-hero), bares his soul to his Narcotics Anynomous Group - and calmly tells the story of killing Gale. It's a riveting scene. And a bit twisty, in that the group believes he's talking about a dog, when he's actually talking about a man. It's a great scene in how it depicts guilt, and justification. Continues to haunt me.
4. The Good Place - S2, Ep 6 - The Trolley Problem - this may be among the darkest and funniest episodes that I've seen, and the best philosophical satire. In the episode Michael fed up with Chidi's theoretical approaches to ethics, subjects Chidi to variations on the Trolley Problem - an ethical dilemma on how to fix an unfixable problem. A trolley is heading for a construction worker, how do you save the construction worker without killing everyone in the trolley, who do you save? It's the many outweigh the one, or the one outweigh's the many?
"Okay, so that was trolley problem version number seven. Chidi opted to run over five William Shakespeares instead of one Santa Claus." - Michael
5. Doctor Who - Tenth Doctor, Series 4, 9th Episode. "Forests of the Dead" (this episode made me a Doctor Who fan) - in this episode, we meet Dr. River Song, and introduced is perhaps the scariest villain/monster yet - it's air piranha - who we see as creeping shadows. Donna and the Doctor have landed on a planet with an empty library, but where have all the people gone? They were eaten alive by the piranha that inhabited the imported books. Doctor River Song arrives, an interplanetary archeologist who knows all the Doctor's secrets, including his real name, but refuses to tell him anything.
Can you pick a favorite episode from 5 different shows? Tell us why they're so memorable!"
Not as easy as it looks. I drew a blank and had to struggle to come up with Five. Also, I'd say a few are more memorable than necessarily favorites. They just stick with me, even when I draw a blank.
1. Fool for Love - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (memorable because it's kind of a twist on the flashback and unreliable narrator, where Buffy (a vampire slayer) is asking for information from a vampire (who has tried to kill her on numerous occasions and is known for killing at least three different slayers) on how to avoid being killed by one. But why would he give her the information? And more importantly why should she trust him? What's interesting in the episode - is the vampire, Spike, alternative motive - is not to hurt Buffy, but to get close to her, or gain her trust. And, not because he wants to kill her - quite the opposite. There's a parallel structure here - in that her boyfriend goes off with her incompetent friends to try and kill the vampire that had injured her.
The whole reason she went to Spike for intel is because she was wounded by a vampire.
The twist? Spike tells Buffy that it's nothing that he did or anything special about the vamps that resulted in the slayer's deaths. But the slayer themselves. The only reason he beat them - was they wanted him to. Otherwise, he'd have lost.
Nothing goes as expected in this episode, which makes it fun to watch. And each time I see it, I see something new.
2. Angel the Series - Episode - Dear Boy, in this episode, we get Angel's back story, but mainly through Darla's point of view. He becomes a vampire, and seeks vengeance on his father - by killing everyone in the household including his father. But it is revealed all Angel wanted was his father's approval - which he could never achieve, and Darla reveals that now he never will - because he killed him, and will always be empty and cursed as a result. It's not the soul that is his curse, but that unresolved matter with his father.
3. Breaking Bad - S4 - Problem Dog - Problem Dog - there's a memorable scene in the middle of the episode, that is the only thing I clearly and vividly remember from this series. In it Jesse, partners in crime with Walter White (the show's anti-hero), bares his soul to his Narcotics Anynomous Group - and calmly tells the story of killing Gale. It's a riveting scene. And a bit twisty, in that the group believes he's talking about a dog, when he's actually talking about a man. It's a great scene in how it depicts guilt, and justification. Continues to haunt me.
4. The Good Place - S2, Ep 6 - The Trolley Problem - this may be among the darkest and funniest episodes that I've seen, and the best philosophical satire. In the episode Michael fed up with Chidi's theoretical approaches to ethics, subjects Chidi to variations on the Trolley Problem - an ethical dilemma on how to fix an unfixable problem. A trolley is heading for a construction worker, how do you save the construction worker without killing everyone in the trolley, who do you save? It's the many outweigh the one, or the one outweigh's the many?
"Okay, so that was trolley problem version number seven. Chidi opted to run over five William Shakespeares instead of one Santa Claus." - Michael
5. Doctor Who - Tenth Doctor, Series 4, 9th Episode. "Forests of the Dead" (this episode made me a Doctor Who fan) - in this episode, we meet Dr. River Song, and introduced is perhaps the scariest villain/monster yet - it's air piranha - who we see as creeping shadows. Donna and the Doctor have landed on a planet with an empty library, but where have all the people gone? They were eaten alive by the piranha that inhabited the imported books. Doctor River Song arrives, an interplanetary archeologist who knows all the Doctor's secrets, including his real name, but refuses to tell him anything.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 05:44 pm (UTC)1. Buffy? Of course, Buffy! But I'm going with Becoming II, in which Joss Whedon takes his carefully constructed set-up for the first two seasons, sets it on fire, and then leaves us hanging for the entire summer. It's been 25 years and I still haven't recovered.
2. Breaking Bad, Ozymandias. Directed by Rian Johnson, a masterpiece of emotional devastation. Hank's brutal death in the desert, Walt's betrayal of Jesse, the final phone call between Walt and Skyler...it's almost too much for one hour.
3. The Simpsons, Marge vs. the Monorail. When The Simpsons finally, fully embraced the lunatic potential of Springfield. Written by Conan O'Brien, and in a way, he's never topped it.
4. Steven Universe, Jailbreak. I could pick a dozen episodes of SU, but this one has "Stronger than You", Rebecca Sugar's crowning achievement as a songwriter, and as joyful and defiant a love song as I've ever heard.
5. Parks and Recreation, Leslie and Ron. There are probably better episodes of Parks and Rec, but this one has an almost elemental force that keeps me coming back. It's just Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman, one on one, hashing out seven seasons of shared history and conflicts and somehow coming out the other end as better friends.
(I almost included Trolley Problem; it had the best balance of laffs and philosophy. But I think I like Jeremy Bearimy better, because the sight of Chidi with no fucks to give was just hysterical...)
no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 01:10 am (UTC)I don't remember any of the episodes of the Simpsons. I know I watched it. I have vague recollections of bits and pieces here and there. I also don't remember much of Breaking Bad, except for the therapy sequence in Problem Child for some reason or other - I think it really hit me. Also I think I wrote about it? If I write about it - I remember it.
There's a MASH episode where they have a helicopter fly out Henry (the Captain at the time) desk and chair. And Henry looks up and stares at it. It's hilarious, but I can't remember the name of it - and it's only that scene that I remember. And I wrote a paper on MASH in college and watched every episode about fifteen times.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 05:15 am (UTC)Since it was a Henry Blake, I knew it was an early ep, and I had a dim memory of Jack Soo (later a regular on Barney Miller) as the black marketeer. So I triangulated from there.
You know every episode of Buffy forwards and backwards. There's nothing wrong with your memory.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 12:59 pm (UTC)And I only remember them because I obsessed over it and saw them like twenty times, plus wrote an insane amount of meta.
I honestly think that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for a conflagration of events: 1) 9/11, 2) Evil workplace gaslighting, 3) the discovery of fan discussion boards (which I hadn't known existed). Otherwise it would have been like MASH and Breaking Bad and the Wire, and BSG, and the Monkeeys, and oh so many others. I can't tell you what the episodes were that I loved in most if not all of those. ;-)
My memory works fine, it's just not well indexed, and kind of on the disorganized side, plus alas, brain fog.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 03:23 am (UTC)